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Hungary’s supreme court has awarded financial compensation to two residents who complained that their lives were made a misery and their houses reduced in value by speeding lorries along highway 86 in the west of the country.

We always felt the economic crisis, with its associated scarcity of public money, could bring about more than just misery. We thought it could be the trigger for positive reforms towards more sustainable transport. And there are now signs that things are slowly starting to move in this direction.

Opinion by Jos Dings - T&E Director
Did we miss something? Last year, the European Commission didn’t propose a single new legislative measure to clean up transport. To be fair, it has been spending most of its time worrying about the future of the Eurozone. As a result, for T&E this was the sort of year where seeds for smarter transport policy were sown. We’re optimistic that next year could bring a decent crop of positive changes.

The EU’s new climate change commissioner is promising an initiative on reducing carbon dioxide emissions from lorries, and says the existing agreement to reduce CO2 emissions from new cars could be tightened to provide greater incentives to car makers.

The head of the European Environment Agency says transport trends are still 'pointing in the wrong direction'. She was speaking as the EEA issued a report saying greenhouse gas emissions from transport in the EU have increased by 36% from 1990-2006.